News and Reviews from the Education Library Service

Meeting Authors!

It’s been a busy few weeks for us with projects flying in and out of the SLS office. One of our SLS Librarians, Harriet, found time to meet not one but TWO brilliant authors in the 7 days, as she tells us below…

Meeting two fantastic authors in one week – how good is that?!

Long Stratton High School had Marcus Sedgwick in to talk with their Book Club after school, and Janet Bell the librarian was kind enough to invite me along. The students had between them read an impressive number of his books, with enthusiasm and insight, and I’m sure were inspired to read more after meeting the author. The book most discussed was The Ghosts of Heaven, which is an amazing read for teens and adults. In four sections which can be read in any order, each story is complete in itself, but loosely linked by a spiral theme. There is no official ending, of course, and the reader is challenged to make of it what they will.

On Saturday 18th, I went armed with cake (a sad attempt at creating Cakes In Space – I might have been more successful with Nuts In Space, as surely even I couldn’t go wrong with a few nuts scattered across a chocolate-y traybake?) and braved weekend public transport to Cambridge, to an unconference arranged by our Youth Libraries Group Eastern branch. The theme of the discussion was Emergent Readers, and included an interesting talk by Prof. Clare Wood about speech rhythm sensitivity in young children and how this affects their literacy,

There was also a very dynamic and funny talk by Dave Cousins, author of teen and primary novels and fiction for Collins Big Cat. Do take a look at his website www.davecousins.net ! As well as writing with great humour and warmth, Dave does his own illustrations and wowed his audience with his instant animation tutorial.

We also heard about running Chatterbooks groups, and if you are interested in running a book club in your school, do register for our Chatterbooks training day, 2nd July. – just get in touch.

A list of all the INSET we’re running for the summer term can be found online here, and also published for the new term are our SLS newsletters; Bookbites for Primary and Infant, and High-lights for secondary schools.